Robert Parker - Night Passage

Not much of a life, Lou.

Jesse stood in the middle of the living room and listened to the silence. He turned slowly. There was nothing he was forgetting. Nothing he’d overlooked. He wondered if his apartment would look like this to a stranger, empty and lifeless and temporary. He was glad Jenn’s picture was on his bureau. He looked once more around the small empty space. There was nothing more to see. So Jesse went out the front door and locked it behind him.

Back at the station Jesse stopped to talk with Molly.

“We got a typewriter around here anywhere?” Jesse said.

“Nope. Got rid of them five years ago when we got the computers.”

“Don’t have one left over in the cellar or the storage closet in the squad room, or anyplace?”

“No. Tom made a deal with a used-typewriter guy, from Lynn. When we went computer the typewriter guy came in, took all three typewriters. You want me to see if I can get you one?”

Jesse shook his head.

“No, just curious. Lou Burke have any family?”

“None that I know, Jesse. Parents died a while back. Far as I know he never married.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“Not that he ever talked about. Pretty much the department and the town was what he had.”

Jesse didn’t miss the cutting edge in the remark. The department was Lou Burke’s life, and Jesse had taken it from him.

“There was no typewriter in his apartment,” Jesse said.

“I’m sure there wasn’t,” Molly said. “Lou was a wonderful cop but he hated to write anything. I used to do half his reports for him.”

“So where did he type out his suicide note?” Jesse said.

Molly looked up at Jesse and started to speak and stopped and frowned.

“There’s no typewriter at his house,” she said.

“That’s correct,” Jesse said.

“The note wasn’t printed out of a computer.”

“No,” Jesse said.

“Maybe he went to somebody’s house that had a typewriter,” Molly said.

Jesse picked up a pad of blue-lined yellow paper from Molly’s desk. There were fifty pads just like it in the office supply cabinet in the squad room.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to have handwritten the note?” Jesse said.

“That is odd,” Molly said. “Though suicidal people are, you know” — Molly tossed her hands — “crazy.”

Jesse put the notepad back down on Molly’s desk. He didn’t.say anything.

“Unless he didn’t write the note,” Molly said. “And whoever did it just assumed that there’d be typewriters in the station. But even if there were, we’d find out pretty quick that they weren’t used for the note.”

“Which means whoever wrote it was stupid,” Jesse said.

“That’s not all it means,” Molly said.

“No,” Jesse said, “it’s not.”

He walked back toward his office. Molly watched him as he went.

“Jesus,” she said softly.

Jesse parked his car in the curving cobblestone driveway of the Episcopal church rectory. It was a big brick building with a green center entrance door and green shutters. It was a bright morning, and the grass of the rectory lawn was wet with the early morning frost that had melted in the sun. A woman wearing an apron over a flowered dress answered Jesse’s ring.

She said, “Reverend is expecting you, Chief Stone.”

Jesse followed her into the study, where the reverend was at his desk. The room was lined with books, and there was a fire burning in the fireplace. Reverend Cotter was gray-haired and pink-cheeked. He was wearing a brown tweed jacket over his black minister’s front-and-backwards collar. He stood and shook Jesse’s hand and gestured him to a chair beside the desk. He waited until the housekeeper left before he spoke.

“Thank you very much for coming so promptly,” he said.

He had a deep voice, and he was pleased with it.

“Glad to,” Jesse said.

Cotter unlocked the middle drawer of his desk with a small key on his key chain, and tucked the key chain back into his pants pocket. He opened the drawer and took out a five-by-seven manila envelope and placed it on his desk, taking time to center it and to adjust it so that it was neatly square in the middle of his clean desk blotter.

“This is very embarrassing,” he said.

“Whatever it is,” Jesse said, “it won’t be as embarrassing as other stuff I’ve been told.”

Cotter nodded.

“Yes, I’m sure. Indeed I often reassure my own parishioners in the same way when they come for help.”

Jesse nodded and smiled politely. Cotter took in a big breath of air and let it out. Then he handed the envelope to Jesse. It was postmarked the previous day from Paradise. It was addressed to Reverend Cotter, probably with a ballpoint pen, in block printing, no return address. Inside was a Polaroid picture. Jesse took it out, handling it by the edges, and looked at it. It was a picture of Cissy Hathaway, naked and provocative on a bed. There was nothing else in the envelope except a piece of shirt cardboard used to protect the picture. There was nothing in the picture to identify the room.

“Just this?” Jesse said.

“Yes,” Cotter said.

“Any idea why this would be sent to you?”

“No.”

“It came this morning?”

“Yes.”

Jesse sat quietly looking at the picture. He could see no real expression in Cissy’s face, though the harsh light of the Polaroid flashbulb would wash out subtlety.

“Mind if I keep this?” Jesse said.

“Please,” Cotter said. “I certainly don’t want it.”

“Anything else arrives let me know,” Jesse said. “Or if anything occurs to you.”

“Of course,” Cotter said.

Jesse put the picture back in the envelope, and slid the envelope in the side pocket of his jacket.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’ll check it for fingerprints,” Jesse said.

“Are you going to speak to Cissy?”

“Yes,” Jesse said.

“I... I am her minister,” Cotter said. “If I can help...”

“Sure,” Jesse said. I’ll let you know if we need you.”

Jesse sat with Cissy Hathaway in her kitchen, looking out at the backyard now flowerless, the grass yellow in the weak sunlight. He handed her the Polaroid.

“This came today in the mail addressed to Reverend Cotter,” Jesse said.

Cissy took the picture and stared at it. As she looked at the picture she began to blush. Jesse was still. Cissy kept her eyes fixed on the picture, her face expressionless except for the bright flush that made her look feverish. She didn’t say anything, and Jesse didn’t say anything, and the silence grew stifling the longer it went on.

Finally Jesse said, “As far as I can see, there’s no crime here. You can tell me to buzz off, if you want to. But I thought you should know.”

Cissy put the picture facedown on the kitchen table and stared at the blank back of it. Jesse waited. Cissy got up from the table suddenly and walked to the counter. She got a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and stood with her back to him looking out the window over the sink at her driveway and the neighbor’s yard beyond it. She took a deep inhale and let the smoke dribble out. Jesse was silent.

“Jo Jo,” she said with her back still to him. “Jo Jo took that picture. He has others.”

“Did he coerce you?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“Do you know why he sent the picture to your minister?”

Cissy took another big inhale and let the smoke out, still with her back to Jesse. She seemed to he memorizing every detail of the neighbor’s lawn. Jesse was quiet. It was going to come, he knew that. All he needed to do was wait.

“Yes,” Cissy said. “I know.”